Design with bees on reverse, part of collection inspired by plants and animals, was voted people’s favourite
The first £1 coin bearing the official portrait of King Charles III has entered general circulation as part of a collection inspired by plants and animals found across the four nations of the United Kingdom.
The latest design, featuring two bees, has been issued to Post Offices and banks, with nearly 3m coins making their way into tills and pockets.
Continue reading...Blue tits, starlings, wood pigeons and blackbirds next most sighted in RSPB survey involving 600,000 participants
A friendly if slightly tuneless chirp is the most ubiquitous birdsong in British gardens with the house sparrow topping the Big Garden Birdwatch charts for the 21st consecutive year, according to the annual RSPB survey.
Blue tits, starlings, wood pigeons and blackbirds were the next most-sighted birds by more than 600,000 participants in the world’s largest wildlife garden survey.
Continue reading...Report links rise in birds trapped for human consumption to cuts in anti-poaching resources in area of British military base
More than 400,000 songbirds were trapped and killed in Cyprus last autumn as part of a recent increase in wildlife crime, according to a new report.
Organised crime networks use decoys and speakers playing birdsong to lure these small birds – including garden favourites such as robins and sparrows – to land in bushes or orchards, where they catch them with “mist” nets or branches covered in glue. They are then sold via the hidden market to restaurants to be eaten as a local dish called “ambelopoulia”, which consists of pickled or boiled songbirds.
Continue reading...People encouraged to record sightings of mohican-sporting birds in RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend
The scale of this waxwing winter will be revealed this weekend when people are encouraged to spend an hour recording the birds they see in their gardens, balconies, parks and school grounds.
The spectacular migratory, mohican-sporting birds have been spotted across Britain during the colder weather and will be recorded alongside more familiar sparrows, blackbirds and robins in the RSPB’s annual Big Garden Birdwatch.
Continue reading...Exclusive: In wake of RSPB tweet controversy, Charity Commission says voluntary sector entitled to engage in political activity
Charities should not hold back from engaging in political activity and on emotive issues on social media such as race or immigration, even where they risk triggering controversy, the voluntary sector watchdog has said.
Guidance to be issued by the Charity Commission this week makes it clear charities are entitled to campaign robustly online in support of their mission and beneficiaries. To do so they must have the backing of their trustee boards, keep within the law, and act with “respect and tolerance.”
Continue reading...Do the charity’s accusations that the government has reneged on a range of environmental pledges stand up to scrutiny?
If the RSPB hoped to raise awareness about the perplexing concept of “nutrient neutrality” their post calling Rishi Sunak, Michael Gove and Thérèse Coffey “LIARS!” worked: it has, to date, been viewed by five million people.
“You lie, and you lie, and you lie again,” the conservation charity declared on X, formerly Twitter, listing a number of environmental statements from the trio over recent years.
Continue reading...Number of house sparrows spotted has dropped by nearly 60% since 1979, according to RSPB annual survey
House sparrows are the most spotted bird in UK gardens for the 20th year in a row, according to new data. This comes despite the decline of the bird’s population, with nearly 22 million house sparrows lost from the country since 1966.
Roughly 1.5 million house sparrows were spotted in gardens between 27 and 29 January this year, according to people who took part in the Big Garden Birdwatch, the garden wildlife survey conducted by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).
Continue reading...RSPB shares results as Britons encouraged to spend an hour counting birds in annual Big Garden Birdwatch
Watching birds and hearing birdsong have a positive impact on wellbeing for more than nine in 10 people, according to a survey to mark the largest garden wildlife count in the world.
People are being urged to boost their mental health and help scientists by spending an hour this weekend counting the birds in their garden or local park for the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch.
Continue reading...Conservationists welcome successful breeding season but say birds remain at risk of being illegally killed
Nearly 120 rare hen harrier chicks have fledged in England this year, the highest number for more than a century, England’s conservation agency has said.
Natural England and its partners recorded 119 hen harrier chicks successfully fledging from nests across uplands in County Durham, Cumbria, Lancashire, Northumberland and Yorkshire. A fledgling is a young bird that has grown enough to acquire its initial flight feathers and is preparing to leave the nest and care for itself.
Continue reading...RSPB warns of risk to UK wild bird population this winter from 1 October release of captive-bred birds
Conservationists have called for ministers to ban the release of millions of gamebirds to prevent the UK’s wild birds being wiped out by a “catastrophic” avian flu epidemic this winter.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said there was a significant risk that pheasants, partridge and ducks released for shooting from 1 October could spread avian influenza into wild bird populations, wreaking havoc in farmland and garden birds.
Continue reading...Conservationists who re-established the raptors in the UK with birds from Spain are now returning the favour
When red kites were reintroduced in England more than 30 years ago, young birds were brought over from thriving populations in Spain. Now the carrion-feeding raptor is doing so well that English chicks – with distant Spanish ancestry – are being flown back to Spain to boost ailing numbers there.
Fed on culled grey squirrels and meticulously checked by vets, 15 chicks collected from nests in Northamptonshire are this week travelling to southern Spain where they will be held in special aviaries in the countryside until they are mature enough to be set free.
Continue reading...Many swifts flying back to Britain will find their summer nests lost to building renovations. But bird bricks are offering them an alternative home
Eagerly anticipated by many, it is a thrilling moment when you first hear the distinctive screech or catch sight of the long, tapered wings of the first swifts arriving for the summer. For thousands of years they have looped to the British Isles from Africa to raise the next generation, taking advantage of the long daylight hours in the north and the opportunity to scour the skies for insects from dawn to dusk.
Since they left Britain’s shores in August last year, these remarkable birds will have flown some 14,000 miles without stopping; feeding, sleeping, drinking and preening themselves on the wing. The birds returning now are likely to be at least four years old – the breeders. They head straight back to their nesting holes under eaves or gaps in stone and brickwork that they claimed and defended last summer. Within a few days their mate will arrive and, having spent nine months living independently, they will start to preen each other’s feathers within the nesting hole, crooning softly and bonding once again.
Continue reading...Diclofenac was approved in Spain and Italy despite being banned in Asia after it had wiped out millions of birds
A recently approved veterinary drug has been confirmed as the cause of death of a vulture in Spain. Conservationists say the incident could be the tip of an iceberg, and warn that the drug could wipe out many of Europe’s vultures as well as harming related species, including golden eagles.
The anti-inflammatory agent diclofenac has already been banned in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh after it was found to kill vultures that ate the carcasses of cattle treated with the drug. Tens of millions of vultures are believed to have died in this way with some species declining by a staggering 99.9% in parts of south Asia.
Continue reading...UK government said it failed on two-thirds of targets, but RSPB analysis is bleaker – and suggests UK is moving backwards in some areas
The UK has failed to reach 17 out of 20 UN biodiversity targets agreed on 10 years ago, according to an analysis from conservation charity RSPB that says the gap between rhetoric and reality has resulted in a “lost decade for nature”.
The UK government’s self-assessment said it failed on two-thirds of targets (14 out of 20) agreed at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan, in 2010, but the RSPB analysis suggests the reality is worse. On six of the 20 targets the UK has actually gone backwards. The government’s assessment published last year said it was not regressing on any target.
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